Worst weekend of season for Haga

Noriyuki Haga adds just five points to his tally at Silverstone after struggling to get comfortable on the circuit's revised layout.
Haga, British WSBK 2010
Haga, British WSBK 2010
© Gold and Goose

Noriyuki Haga endured arguably the worst weekend of his 2010 World Superbike campaign as he failed to achieve anything more than a 13th and 14th place finish at Silverstone.

The Ducati Xerox rider, who had enjoyed success at Silverstone prior to its return to the WSBK calendar, had bemoaned his inability to get a rhythm on the revised layout following practice and qualifying and continued to struggle in the races.

Experiencing problems with the rear of his bike, Haga says he was unable to push as he would have liked, his eventual haul of five points signalling his worst of what has already been a difficult season.

"In race one it was really difficult as the rear was moving around all over the place and so I couldn't open the throttle when I needed to or make up positions as I'd hoped to. We made some changes for the second race but they didn't improve my overall feeling with the bike. It seemed like I needed more traction and I could only push so much. It was a very difficult weekend."

Team-mate Michel Fabrizio fared significantly better as he finished race day as the highest-placed non-Brit with fourth in race one. However, technical issues in race two prevented him from building on that.

"Well as we expected, the British riders really had the bit between their teeth and it was all I could so to stick with them. I didn't expect Haslam to get past when he did but once he did, there wasn't much I could do about it, but nevertheless I'm pretty satisfied with fourth to tell the truth.

"In race two my rear tyre was moving around a lot and having lost a lot of ground I came in to try to change it but once I went back on track I realised that nothing had changed and, out of the points zone, I retired from the race."

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